


Smoke and Mirrors

by iwillsendapostcard (zoeteniets)



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, SPECTRE (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Q is a Holmes, Recreational Drug Use, Spoilers for SPECTRE, state secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeteniets/pseuds/iwillsendapostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A drabble about what happened when Q met Max Denbigh at university, six years before the events of SPECTRE</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> One thing I was very pleased about in SPECTRE was Andrew Scott’s ability to play a character that was basically Moriarty (if he were lower down the food chain) without being Moriarty. Though the occasional glance of him did come through, especially towards the climax of the film. So of course I now have all these feelings about C being Moriarty’s younger brother in the same way that Q was adopted as ‘the other one’ of the Holmes brothers. The following is my hypothesis on how that might have happened.

Perhaps they were both at Oxford together (Sherlock went to Cambridge I believe- nothing like a bit of Oxbridge rivalry). Perhaps Q and Max have found each other in Christ Church’s student bar, and the alcohol is making them a little loose with their information. After all Sherlock and Moriarty are two sides of the same coin; the pressure of being one’s brother would apply to the other. Perhaps they bond over their family pressures, start sitting together in the library, Q typing away on his laptop while Max frowns over a macro-economics textbook. They swap tasks one day as a bet that the other can’t understand the shit they have to deal with in their degree. But they both sort of manage to muddle through. And Q starts teaching Max a little bit of coding, but mostly they get into debates about the ethics of mass observation and data collection. 

Max procures some weed one day and they smoke it out of the window of C’s college room. They lie together on the bed, the sheets pulled off because Q says he is too hot, their shirts in the pile for similar reasons. They lie there in each other’s arms, stroking each other’s skin for no other reason than because it feels good, illuminated only by streetlights and the glow of Q’s laptop screen. 

One day they stumble into Max’s room to find a figure sitting on the bed. He’s like Max but older, stands with a weight on his shoulder. A distorted mirror image in the same way Q reflects his brothers. He cocks his head at Q as if he is weighing up what wine to serve him with when he easts him for dinner and asks his little brother to introduce him to his new friend. 

It all goes tits up after that. Q’s room is broken into and his laptop and a few personal effects are stolen, but it’s a uni town and there’s not much the police can do. Q gets a call one day asking him to come home right now, but he’s got finals and he can’t leave if he wants to graduate on time. So he hides in Max’s room and waits for the storm to pass. He waits until Max is asleep before “borrowing” his laptop, hacking into every government agency he can find, trying to predict Mycroft’s orders before he has the chance to give them. 

As it is, Q’s already too good for his laptop to be broken into. The sensitive information that he has, procured through a combination of Sherlock stealing his laptop and his own idle curiosity, is too encrypted to really be all that threatening. That’s probably why Mycroft hasn’t marched up to Oxford and dragged him out by his ears. But the very fact that he has that information, and that it is now in the hands of a master criminal, the very same master criminal who is threatening Mycroft and therefore by default the British Government is damming enough. When Max excitedly tells him that he’s been given a new laptop as an early birthday present, Q knows he’s fucked. 

With the help of Sherlock’s chemical expertise he’s able to take a potent enough combination of drugs that he develops a very convincing stomach flu that enables him to take his exams in a private room of college. He’s put in isolation to stop him cheating, and Q is thankful that it keeps him away from Max. They’d promised each other that they would go punting as soon as their exams finished, and Max’s exams ended four days before Q’s even started. 

Q isn’t infallible and as soon as the last paper is turned in he does what every other student is doing and goes out to every bar he can find, even the one that’s so dark, and damp, and hot that the sweat genuinely drips down the walls. He knows he should call Max but he can’t. This is the end. From tomorrow he knows it’s over. He’s too much of a coward to face him. 

But his drunken feet drag him where he needs to go most. 

Max’s room. It’s two am. When Max opens the door his eyes are wide. He almost looks comical, cartoonish. And at that moment he’s in technicolour. Q kisses him, and for a moment he is too. 

They fall to bed, naked without how knowing how they got there. It feels so good, the drugs and the alcohol and the stress of exams and the spectres of their brothers casting shadows on the wall. For the moment it’s the two of them finding comfort in each other, floating on clouds of C’s duvet, warm and soft and free. Max is in him, moving with him, and Q cries it tastes that good. 

Q wakes up first. When he kisses Max’s still sleeping mouth it tastes like goodbye.

He’s snatched on Merton Street. He’d have gone willingly if they had asked, but it’s not really their style. 

The deal is simple. You can sit in jail for the next twenty years while we try to work out how you got into our systems and then work out what crime to charge you with. Or you work for us. Stay quiet, and no one needs to know that your devotion to your brother and your, how did they put it- “undesirable” friendships, put the security of the entire nation at stake. 

Max sends three postcards. Q pretends not to notice the tear stains on the last one. 

It’s been six years. First there was the bomb, then there was Silva, and then there was Skyfall. When Q took on his first job he was there purely for computing and hacking, but now that he’s the head of the department he’s squirreled a bit more budget away for, what Sherlock would call, ‘tinkering’. 

An email is sent: Max Denbigh is going tour the department on Thursday. Q emails Tanner, informs him that he is moving down to the bunker to focus more on the (desperately needed may I remind you Bill) tech updates and suggests that C will be so much more interested in the monitoring and surveillance section that he is leaving in R’s capable hands.  
Tanner takes the hint. 

At the end, Q watches C from the corner of his eyes. His concentration is shot. This should be much easier than it is. He hits a wall he needs a key to enter, not unlike the one Silva had up, and for a moment he nearly calls the whole thing off. 

But this thing is bigger than him. And once he tears his eyes off C’s shocked and desperate face he realises that he knew the answer all along. 

It’s his name, and the number of Max’s uni room. 

He still has time, opens the door, and his guilty eyes meet C’s. Max almost seems to pull his body form the edge, arms reaching out for Q as if a touch from him will save him. 

Part of Q doesn’t believe it’s true, both their brothers faked their own deaths, so why not Max? 

He leans out of his window and watches the smoke dance in the glow of the streetlights.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come play on tumblr if Max/Q is your thing <3 I would love to see more of this paring! Come scream ideas/headcannons/fic's at me xx


End file.
